This week I wrapped up reading The New Jim Crow at the invitation of my cousin. It explores the current bias in incarceration rates among black males in America. I very much didn’t want to believe that racism on an institutional scale still existed. I mean, it’s illegal, how could it? The book painted a picture of the updated stereotype of the black male, an urban drug dealer which seems to be so widespread that even black people believe it. So while blacks and whites use drugs at roughly the same rates, blacks are 10 times more likely to go to jail for it. This (and other stereotypes) plays an almost seen role in creating the bias (both conscious and unconscious) against black men. So while blatant racism exists in diminishing numbers, this less conscious bias still has a societal grip on the country.
A few days later I met up with a friend to discuss another case of discrimination: women. For a few hours I was able to ask her about various instances of discrimination within our cultural and religious society and she painted me a picture that looked familiar. Sexism is also illegal. Yet women still get paid less, have lower expectations of them, and are discounted in councils in the business world and religious world. They are treated as prey until they are married and servants afterwards. Young Women’s groups train girls to be princesses trying to catch a male knight to take care of them the rest of their lives. 12 year-old girls plan weddings while the boys are playing basketball. The assumptions of gender roles are so deep that even women discriminate against women.
Now of course these are generalizations. Both racism and sexism have changed over the decades and conditions are improving. There are exceptions to all of these cases. But there is injustice felt by so many yet in this society. Injustice that may well be beyond my white male ability to empathize.
The second Co-ed Timberline Scout Camp hosted by the Utah National Parks Council. I was one of the adult leaders.
I took my niece and nephew to Wheeler Farm the other day. Their parents needed time so I snagged an opportunity to create one more memory for them. Wheeler Farm seems very much like I remember from 15 years ago when I went as a kid, a place to milk cows, feed geese and wander around. Anyway, I watched Bailey (4) and Benson (2) run around the playground and interact with the other kids for a few hours. I particularly remember one girl, maybe 5, who took off down the highest slide without a trace of fear. Bailey insisted that I go down with her, somewhat difficult as I’m a little long to make the turns in the slide anymore. Anyway, we followed the fearless girl down to the bottom and as we were getting up the girl went up to Bailey and said “Will you be my friend?” Bailey said yes without a thought and they both ran off giggling as though they had both just participated in some ritual that I knew nothing about. A while later we were exploring a treehouse but there were two older boys in it perhaps 6 or 7 years old. As Bailey climbed up to enter the house they said “no girls allowed, we wrote above the door, Boys only.” Bailey stood on the porch and looked perplexingly in. I told her it was okay and she could go in the treehouse but she wouldn’t until the boys left. Then she whipped out an invisible marker and wrote on the door frame “for boys and girls only” and then marched in.
With a head swimming with the week’s experiences I could just shake my head and wonder at it all. Why are we this way? Why do we have some innate need to divide ourselves? That experience is going to be part of her forever. Of course she brushed it off and moved forward but she now has this idea that sometimes girls aren’t allowed, or maybe that sometimes boys aren’t allowed. Even if she forgets the details of that day it will be enforced by other experiences. No matter where she goes or how society changes there will always be people telling her she can’t do something.
At least that day she was able to pick up the marker and change the rules. And in retrospect isn’t that something that everyone has to do constantly? They have to decide which criticisms to ignore and which ones to listen to. The truth is it’s easier to control yourself than it is to control other people. I can let myself stew and boil over the injustices of the world and blame anyone and everyone. Or I can choose to be different and focus on the good in the world, on the kind children in the playground that play with strangers, or the farmer that let a 4-year-old milk his cow, Quite possibly I will do a better job at changing the world by being a person that believes and acts as if everyone had infinite worth than any amount of finger pointing and tears of frustration.
And guess what? I do believe that everyone has infinite worth. I just have to learn act accordingly.
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